The University may need to change the way it investigates and
evaluates cases of alleged sexual assault if federal legislators approve
a new law on sexual violence.
Introduced to the United States Senate by a bipartisan group of
12 senators on Feb. 26, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act
seeks to regulate how universities and colleges handle cases of sexual
assault.
After the first iteration of the bill in July was not passed, the
Senators revised the legislation based on feedback from stakeholders. Cornell Police Chief Kathy Zoner was among those who testified, appearing Dec. 9 before the U.S. Senate to provide her opinion
on strengthening the law, according to the University.
The updated version of the bill now requires universities to conduct a mandatory, anonymous survey on students’ experiences with
See SEXUAL ASSAULT page 4

En vogue
MICHAELA BREW /
SUN SPORTS
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

A design by
Madeline Miles
’14 is displayed
yesterday on
the terrace
floor of the
Human
Ecology
Building.

for American higher education,” he said.
According to Skorton, the most discussed issue
concerning the future of American higher education
President David Skorton spoke to members of is affordability.
“There’s no doubt, despite strong voices for the
the faculty about the future of American higher educontrary, that higher education at the Faculty Senate
cation has a major impact
meeting Wednesday.
“There’s no doubt, despite
on graduates’ economic
In what Skorton said
strong voices for the contrary,
success,” Skorton said.
would be his last time
that higher education has a
“Unlike other major
addressing the Faculty
expenditures that one
Senate as president of the
major impact on graduates’
might finance with debt,
University, he said he was
economic success.”
like a car, the investment
going to be “blunt and
in higher education ecodirect” about what he
President David Skorton
nomically appreciates and
views to be the direction of
doesn’t depreciate over
American higher educatime.”
tion following 35 years of experience.
According to Skorton, Cornell has a long tradi“I decided to accept a very gracious invitation
that [Dean of Faculty Joseph Burns Ph.D. ’66] tion of providing talented students from a wide varigave me to speak about just a few of the opportunities and the challenges that I see going forward
See SKORTON page 4
By MELVIN LI

Gretchen Ritter ’83, dean of
the College of Arts and Sciences,
spoke about Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s ’54
successes as a civil rights lawyer
and how her experience at
Cornell shaped her professional
passion at a talk in Hans Bethe
House Wednesday night.
As a student at Cornell in the
1950s, Ginsburg had exceptional teachers such as Robert
Cushman
and
Vladimir
Nabokov, who would greatly
influence her, according to

Ritter. Ritter said that Cushman,
a government professor, impressed on Ginsburg the importance of democracy and government and particularly the
importance of civil liberties.
Ginsburg reflected on her
Cornell career at an alumni event
in September, where Ritter said
she cited Vladimir Nabokov as
having a particular impact on her
writing and career.
“Professor Nabokov changed
the way I read and changed the
way I write,” Ginsburg said at the
event, which was held at The
New-York Historical Society.
“Even when I’m drafting [High

Court] opinions, thinking about
how the word order should go, I
remember him.”
Ritter said that prior to
Ginsburg’s advocacy in the court
for women’s equal protection of
the law, there was not a single
cohesive foundation on which to
base an argument, so gender
equality advocates had not made
much progress.
“For several decades there was
a partisan competition between
the Democratic Party which
favored working class women and
the Republican Party which
See GINSBURG page 5